Parker Milner
Parker Milner covers food as a mix of criticism, service journalism and behind-the-scenes reporting, tying individual meals and venues to the larger dining ecosystem he oversees at The Post and Courier. His work focuses on the region’s acclaimed restaurant scene, but he consistently pushes beyond straightforward reviews to include storytelling about people, places and the infrastructure that makes dining possible. Across articles, columns and multimedia segments, he aims to help readers decide where and what to eat while revealing how chefs, trends and industry realities shape that experience.
Restaurant reviews and curated dining guides
Milner leads the masthead’s food coverage and writes detailed restaurant reviews, including assessments of menu, ambiance and overall experience, such as his review of The Select. His coverage emphasizes context, drawing on anecdotes about the people involved or the history of a building to make a review more than a list of dishes to order or avoid. He also produces service pieces that function as dining guides, like his “Daily Digest” column on perfecting go-to road trip snacks, which offers readers practical advice on what to bring and why. Beyond individual reviews, he curates lists and recommendations, highlighted by features promoted as “five restaurants to try” and a broader guide to eating and drinking in the area, positioning him as a primary voice on where to eat and drink locally. In these formats, he blends clear judgments about food and drink with accessible explanations that help readers match venues to occasions, from everyday meals to special nights out.
Chefs, events and culinary competitions
A significant strand of Milner’s work centers on chefs and culinary events, treating them as the personalities and touchpoints that animate the local food scene. He covers chef-driven stories such as a Food Network series featuring three South Carolina chefs, using televised competitions to showcase regional talent and raise the profile of local kitchens and cuisines. In video and social formats, he highlights specific restaurants and dishes, as in segments where he shares standout meals from the Indian restaurant Rivayat Creative Indian, translating chef intentions and flavor profiles into clear takeaways for viewers. His coverage extends to food events and reader-facing promotions, including features tied to “best foodie” events and playful challenges like the Red Lobster shrimp-eating promotion, where he offers favorites and practical advice for making the most of such deals. Across these pieces, Milner treats chefs, events and competitions as entry points into broader conversations about taste, hospitality and how dining culture is marketed and celebrated.
Food trends, products and everyday eating
Milner regularly tracks food trends and consumer products, connecting national or online buzz to everyday eating habits. His work on tinned fish, for example, examines a product category that has surged in popularity, taste-testing multiple options and recommending the best choices for charcuterie boards or simple dinners. In his road trip snacks column, he explores how people plan food for travel, framing snack selection as an “art worth perfecting” and turning a mundane decision into a considered, service-oriented discussion. Similar pieces and video segments show him sampling and explaining menu items, packaged foods and chain restaurant offerings, giving readers and viewers straightforward guidance on what is worth their time and money. This trend-focused coverage sits alongside his restaurant writing, rounding out a beat that treats both high-profile dining rooms and everyday snacks as part of the same food landscape.
Behind-the-scenes of the food industry
Milner’s beat also includes reporting on the less glamorous, operational side of the food world, which distinguishes his coverage from purely promotional or lifestyle-oriented food writing. In a Q&A column on grease traps, he explains how this unappealing but essential infrastructure shapes restaurant operations, using the topic to show that the food beat can lead to unexpected, technical stories. Profile and feature work described in professional coverage indicates that he chronicles restaurant openings and closures as well as the fishing and farming that supply local kitchens, connecting front-of-house experiences to back-of-house and upstream realities. By incorporating these elements, he treats food as an industry as much as a leisure activity, explaining how regulation, supply chains and physical infrastructure affect what ends up on a plate. This approach gives his readers a fuller picture of the forces behind their favorite restaurants, from new openings and menu changes to the maintenance and sourcing issues that operators navigate.
Role within The Post and Courier’s food coverage
Milner holds a central role in directing and producing food content for The Post and Courier, having joined the masthead to lead its food section after earlier experience running another publication’s food coverage. He is identified as the Food Editor in multiple official and professional contexts, underscoring that he not only writes but also shapes the broader strategy and mix of food stories. His output spans written articles, columns, guides and a growing slate of video segments where he appears on camera to taste dishes, explain trends and walk audiences through new restaurants or products. Taken together, Milner’s portfolio presents a beat built on restaurant criticism, practical recommendations, chef and event coverage, and attention to the operational realities of the food business, making his work a comprehensive lens on contemporary dining in his coverage area.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou stands out for rigorously testing food and kitchen products and turning those hands-on trials into clear shopping advice. She is a commerce writer at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she makes newsletters and shopping guides for home cooks. Her beat is food commerce, with coverage of air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, pepper grinders, electrolyte drinks, and cookbooks. She focuses on what is worth buying, how it performs, how it tastes, and how it fits daily routines and wellness. She also writes sale-driven lists and roundup pieces, and she has worked on Bon Appétit’s Feel Good Food Plan. Her reporting is practical, direct, and grounded in product testing.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.